Mario Kart 8 has taken the otherwise sales-challenged Wii U by storm, and Nintendo’s showing no signs of slowing down. On Wednesday, The Big N announced two downloadable content packs for Mario Kart 8 featuring new vehicles, new cups, new courses and even Link.

That’s right: for the first time in the storied Mario Kart franchise, the Hylian Hero will be playable. The Legend of Zelda Mario Kart Crossover will release in November for $7.99. An Animal Crossing Mario Kart mash-up, featuring the Villager and Isabelle, will release in May for the same price. Nintendo is offering a bundle that includes both DLCs for $11.99.

Each DLC pack comes equipped with three characters, four vehicles and two new cups, each with four courses. Some of the new tracks will be remakes of levels from previous Mario Kart titles while others will be brand new to the series.

I’ve been playing some version of Mario Kart since I was in kindergarten. As the years have gone by, I’ve been routinely impressed by Nintendo’s ability to reinvent their tried-and-true formula for each new generation.

Thankfully, some things never change.

Wii U’s Mario Kart 8 delivers the most difficult, precision-based, fortune-favoring, go-kart mayhem to ever hit a Nintendo console. Most everything about this title is an improvement over its predecessors.

For starters, the level design in this game is phenomenal. These courses will make players feel like MK8 isn’t just a race, but an adventure. Each track centers around a different theme that accentuates the energetic and colorful nature of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Soccer is one of six competitions in the upcoming Kinect Sports Rivals

Xbox One’s Kinect Sports Rivals doesn’t hit store shelves until April 8, but the Microsoft Store in Park Meadows is giving folks a chance to play it before then — not to mention an opportunity to meet two Denver Broncos in the process.

In celebration of the game’s release, the store will hold events on April 5, 6, 8, 12 and 13. Broncos’ defensive lineman Malik Johnson and safety Duke Ihenacho will be at the store from 1 p.m. to 3 on Saturday, April 5 for autographs and photos.

Made by Rareware games, Kinect Sports Rivals is the fourth installment in series but the first to use the Xbox One’s improved camera for the Kinect, which works with voice and motion-activated commands. Rareware’s Nick Burton said the new Kinect has the ability to understand two people speaking at once — in light or in complete darkness. He said the original Kinect tracks 20 joints on two people; the new version can track 25 joints on six bodies.

I promised myself I wouldn’t spend any money on Angry Birds Go!, and as of last week, I had finished more than half the game without doing so.

The free-to-download, free-to-play racing game, which was released in December, is like many of its ilk: the basics don’t cost a thing, but if you want to keep racing with better resources or after your turn is up, real-world cash is required.

And therein lies the addictive pleasure of gaming in general and free-to-play games in particular. We want to level up, to flaunt our scores on social media and leaderboards. We want to master this stupid time waster that somehow grips our brains for hours on end.

But we always run up against a wall. We’re only $5 — or $10 or $20 — away from owing the best cart or the most upgrades. We feel like second-class citizens only using the default options, but we refuse to give in to the manipulative format and buy more. Are we cheap or just practical?

A little help goes a long way in exploring the intimidatingly vast world of Grand Theft Auto 5.

By any mobile, console, PC, or dystopian nightmare virtual reality standard, Grand Theft Auto V is a groundbreaking game. Its open-world map is bigger than all previous Grand Theft Auto games combined, and about three times larger than Rockstar Games’ huge western playground in Red Dead Redemption.

Since its release last Tuesday, gamers have been luxuriating in not just the sheer number of structured and achievement-grabbing things they can do, but the more unstructured time-passers. There are the impromptu raids and shooting sprees, races, chases, sports and all manner of fool’s errands for which the GTA series has become famous. But there’s also a new depth of character, weapons and vehicles customizations.

Of course, it’s considered a sin in hardcore gaming to use a guidebook, play anything on “easy,” or call up any trophy-killing cheats. Games have been getting easier over the years, so why can’t we just trust the designers’ visions? Etcetera.

True as that may be, getting a leg up on games is a time-honored tradition. What else is modding all about? (Skyrim is perhaps the most modded game ever, and I’ll bet all my dust-gathering NES cartridges that casual gamers aren’t the ones writing code to up-res textures or morph broadswords into lightsabers.)

Really, this is what gaming is at heart — testing the limits of constructed world and being rewarded or punished for how well you do in it. GTAV pretty much dares us to see if we can break it.

Q’s thoughts: The Need for Speed franchise has been around for almost 20 years so it’s no surprise that EA and developer Ghost Games (supervised by Criterion Games?) needed to do something different with it. In Rivals, you get play on both sides of the law as both a cop and a criminal.

I got a chance to play the game on the PlayStation 4 this week and it was everything you’d expect from a next-gen title. The animation was incredible, the environments were lush and detailed, and the gameplay was immersive.

I played as a criminal, driving around the map looking for new challenges. And as I drove, I was challenged by other racers who were online to race on the spot. No lobbies, no matchmaking. As I was racing one player, I started being pursued by a cop, who was actually the guy playing next to me.

Never have I wanted to see a remake more than the classic 1983 game Spy Hunter.

I have waited impatiently stomping around like a 2 year old for the return of mass chaos, helicopter interceptions and one of the best theme songs to date. Delivered on the 3DS, the juggernaut delivers successful visual graphics while satisfying my urge to blow up random terrorists with a advanced arrangement of weaponry.

The ability to shoot flamethrowers out of the rear of my car made the little girl in me giggle.

The latest reboot of the Ridge Racer franchise is a satisfyingly destructible, if occasionally repetitive, take on the racing-mayhem genre.

Racing games are a dime a dozen, and even good racing games aren’t that hard to find these days, so I tend to gravitate toward ones that offer over-the-top thrills and clever twists on the genre instead of realistic simulations.

That makes me a sucker for a title like Burnout Paradise, a satisfyingly destructive game that puts a clever spin on racing with an open-world track. There’s also Driver San Francisco, a sleek, moody sandbox offering from last year that plays with the concept of maps and character-switching. And now, Ridge Racer Unbounded.

I’m not super familiar with other Ridge Racer games, but I get the sense from various reviews that this one’s a significant departure from the tone of the franchise. And that’s a mixed bag. Sure, it may be injecting new life into the series, but it does it by aping many of the gameplay mechanics that other titles have spent years developing.

A&E reporter John Wenzel has covered a variety of topics for The Denver Post over the years, including video games, comedy, music and the fine arts. He's been playing and loving video games since his dad brought home a sweet ColecoVision in 1983. Catch him on PSN as beardsandgum.

Hugh got his start writing for the Cheyenne and Woodmen Edition newspapers in Colorado Springs. In 2011 he moved to Denver where he has written for Denver Urban Spectrum and Colorado Community Media’s Wheat Ridge Transcript. Hugh joined The Denver Post in 2014 as an editorial assistant.

Bryan Moore joined The Denver Post sports department in 1997 and has worked in many phases of producing the daily sports section ever since, specifically focusing on coverage of the Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and college football and basketball.